Re: "why I quit writing internet standards"

[Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]>]

David Meyer wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 8:08 AM, George, Wes <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> I’m surprised that no one has sent this out yet:
>> http://gigaom.com/2014/04/12/why-i-quit-writing-internet-standards/
>>
>> "Summary: After contributing to standards organizations for more than seven
>> years, engineer Vidya Narayanan decided it was time to move on. Although she
>> still believes that these organizations make the Internet a better place,
>> she wonders about the pace of change versus the pace of organizations."
>>
>>
>> My friend @colin_dixon pointed this out to me yesterday, and I've been
>> giving it quite a bit of thought since then (I have a nascent blog on
>> the topic of how open source and standards orgs might
>> productively/efficiently work together; follow up to
>> http://www.sdncentral.com/education/david-meyer-reflections-opendaylight-open-source-project-brocade/2014/03).
>>
>> What I can say is that after seeing the kind of progress that several
>> open source communities make (they do epitomize the best of the IETF's
>> running code/rough consensus ethic), one does have to wonder if
>> traditional standards making is either obsolete or in dire need of a
>> make over. What is needed, IMO, is a reimagining of how the standards
>> process interacts with the open source movement specifically focused
>> on how they can compliment one another.
>>

Funny - I spent years pointing out to folks the advantages of the RFC 
process and IETF, over traditional standards bodies and procedures 
(e.g., ISO).  And here we are thinking about IETF as "traditional."

Then again, the current DMARC debacle presents a cautionary tale of more 
ad hoc approaches.

One example that comes to mind is RSS and Atom - started outside, then 
pulled under the IETF process.

Miles Fidelman


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra